Congratulations go out to my wife Jannah and her daughter Lauren Cione, who together put on a successful first charity golf fund raiser that raised about $7,000 for the new RADDSports Charity, Inc., a 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit charitable organization. The new charity will provide scholarships to young athletes who couldnât otherwise afford to participate in the sports programs at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County.
The golf tournament was held at the recently revamped Lexington Oaks Golf Club on Dec. 6 and was blessed with more than 70 golfers, wonderful auction prizes, a bag lunch and a delicious Italian buffet dinner created and served by Lexington Oaks owner Anass El-Omari, his wife Susana Herrera and the golf club staff.
RADDSports president and CEO Richard Blalock told the golfers about the reason why he and the management of RADDSports wanted to start the nonprofit and Anass gave some pre-tournament instructions.
Several of the tournamentâs sponsors, including the Champion Sponsor, the Residence Inn Tampa-Wesley Chapel, Heineken and JJ Taylor provided on-course adult beverages.
What a great day! â Gary Nager; photos by Charmaine George & Morgan Conlin
Hana Sushi & Grill is the latest Asian restaurant to open in New Tampa.
Unlike all of the (mostly) chain restaurants that continue to enter Wesley Chapelâs restaurant scene, New Tampa continues to be a hub for great locally-owned Asian eateries, with more on the way.
Meanwhile, Aroi Thai-Tsuyu, which had been located at 20685 BBD in the Live Oak Preserve area for a couple of years (the same restaurant also has had other names), has closed and been replaced by Hana Sushi & Grill. You can check out the menu at HanaSushiGrillTampa.com.
And finally, Gu Wei Noodles & Grill, which opened in 2020 in the former location of Sukkho-thai on Highwoods Preserve Pkwy. (across from the AMC Highwoods 20 movie theater), is âtemporarily closed for updating the concept.â â GN
Oronzo Has A New Midtown Tampa Location, A New GM In New Tampa & Some Yummy New Menu Items!Â
Even though its original location opened in The Walk at Highwoods Preserve plaza during the pandemic in the summer of 2020, the original location of Oronzo Honest Italian has been successful enough that owner Dan Bavaro decided to open a second location of his fast-casual, from-scratch Italian concept restaurant in the new Midtown Tampa development off I-75 at N. Dale Mabry Hwy.
Bavaro certainly is no stranger to success in the restaurant business. He also has opened four popular locations of Bavaroâs Pizza Napoletana & Pastaria (including St. Pete, Sarasota, on Franklin St. in Tampa and at Tampa International Airport), but Oronzoâs may be Bavaroâs most ambitious concept to date â one that he co-founded with the company that owns The Melting Pot restaurant.
âYouâre getting Bavaroâs old-world, from-scratch Italian cuisine combined with The Melting Pot, which is know for experiences and customer service and we kind of merged those two together to create Oronzo,â Dan told Charley Belcher on a recent Fox 13 News feature about the new Midtown location.
Named for his grandfather Oronzo Bavaro, who emigrated to Brooklyn, NY, from Italy, Oronzo Honest Italian is New Tampaâs only place for actual homemade pastas (which you can watch being made in the open kitchen), plus flatbreads and burrito-style sandwiches made from piadina bread (which Bavaro says dates back to the 1800s) from the eastern Italian town of Rimini, located on the Adriatic Sea.
Whatever its roots may be, Oronzo features modern takes on not only many of the recipes created by Danâs grandmother Angela Bavaro, but also on how to order, create, serve and enjoy made-from-scratch, fast-casual Italian cuisine.
Favorites Old & New!
We featured Oronzo around the same time last year in these pages, but there are several new menu items that have been added, as has new general manager Simon Luckett, who had been with Oronzo for less than two months when we interviewed him for this story.
âItâs a great place, with delicious food and happy customers,â Simon says (no pun intended). âEverything has been really great so far.â
As for the new dishes, one of my favorites is the healthy new Protein Bowl, which features a delicious base of farro and brown rice, with celery, onion, grilled chicken, soppresata pork, roasted mushrooms, garlic, heirloom tomatoes, roasted bell peppers, feta cheese and homemade pesto dressing. So good!
The grilled chicken pesto with fresh zucchini noodles (top left) is a favorite of our editorâs at Oronzo Honest Italian in Highwoods Preserve. We love the cracker-crisp crust of Oronzoâs American flatbread (top, middle), but artisan-style pizzas will be soon be available, too. Oronzoâs Protein Bowl (top right) is one of several delicious new menu items. The new GM at Oronzoâs New Tampa location is Simon Luckett (bottom right). (Photos by Charmaine George)Â
Another savory (albeit less healthy) new dish is the meatball (or chicken) parm Italian burrito, with homemade spaghetti, your choice of sauce, fresh mozzarella and parmesan wrapped in homemade piadina bread. Not only are they super-tasty, itâs also fun to watch them being made!
The new dish I was shocked that I enjoyed was the pasta and Impossible Bolognese (left) with gluten-free rotini pasta. Photographer Charmaine George and I agreed that the Impossible meat substitute looked and tasted like ground beef and you can choose your favorite pasta to go with it.
And, while you also can still get a variety of delicious cracker-crisp flatbread-style pizzas made with Oronzoâs homemade piadina bread (like the American with pepperoni and San Marzano tomatoes pictured on the previous page), also new to the Oronzo menu â but only available at the Midtown Tampa location at our press time â are artisan pizzas with a more traditional crust. Simon says (oops, I did it again) that the artisan pizzas also should be available in New Tampa soon.
But, our favorite menu items at Oronzo still include the amazing zucchini noodles (Jannah loves them with grilled chicken and homemade pesto, but you can also order it âmeatless,â with pomodoro (red), spicy arrabiata, crema (white) or butter and extra virgin olive oil. If youâre not a fan of zucchini noodles (but I think you should try them before you decide), you can get your choice of sauces with Oronzoâs homemade spaghetti, imported Pastaficio DiMartino penne or the gluten-free rotini, and you can add homemade meatballs (which also are available as an appetizer), heirloom tomatoes, roasted mushrooms, and bell peppers.
Oronzo also features a nice selection of fresh salads and soups (Jannah loves the tomato basil soup).
For dessert, try the new Nutella piatto (right)or my long-time favorite cannoli crisps, with the cannoli cream on the side as a dip. Thereâs also Italian wedding cookies and a variety six pack of French-style macarons.
Oronzo also features a kids menu, plus white and red wines, Peroni Italian beer on draught, espresso drinks, a Coca-Cola soda fountain and the tasty Oronziata (a house-made blood orange beverage) and bottled versions of the red sauces for retail sale.Â
Oronzo Honest Italian (18027 Highwoods Preserve Pkwy.) is open 11 a.m.-8 p.m. weekdays (9 p.m. on Fri. & Sat.). For info, visit Oronzo.com or call (813) 730-0100.
Weâve been telling you about RADDSports, the private company that has been responsible for the management and all of the programs at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County, since long before the 98,000-sq.-ft. AdventHealth Sports Arena opened to the public at the Sports Campus in August of 2020.
But, one of the things the management at RADDSports had noticed since it opened is that there are a lot of outstanding athletes throughout the Tampa Bay area who canât afford to pay for the basketball, volleyball, soccer, cheerleading and lacrosse programs offered at the Sports Campus, and that just didnât sit well with president and CEO Richard Blalock and his management team.
In order to rectify that situation, Blalock and his director of marketing Jannah Nager, who had years of prior experience in similar positions for nonprofit organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Pasco Education Foundation, decided to start their own nonprofit charity in order to provide scholarships for kids of all ages and ability levels who couldnât afford to participate in the programs at the Sports Campus.
âRADDSports Charity wants to change the culture of youth sports by promoting equal access to quality sports and fitness programs, regardless of their ability to pay,â says Blalock, who also serves as the new Charityâs Chairman of the Board. âWe decided we needed to start our charity to provide these kids who couldnât afford our programs with scholarships to participate in their choice of sports at the Wiregrass Sports Campus of Pasco County. Our goal is to promote the total overall well-being and development of each child through education, discipline, physical fitness and teaching proper technique of each sport, and we donât want cost to be an issue.â
Former NFL players Brandon Ghee (left) and Chris Pressley are among the former pro and college athletes on the Board of Directors of the new RADDSports Charity, which will be hosting its first-ever fund-raising golf tournament at Lexington Oaks Golf Club on Dec. 6.
How You Can Help
In order to kick off the fund-raising arm of the new RADDSports Charity, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Nager decided to organize a charity golf tournament, which will be held on Monday, December 6, at the recently upgraded Lexington Oaks Golf Club.
âThis event is our first of hopefully many fund raisers for the RADDSports Charity,â Nager says. âIt should allow us to fund our first round of scholarships, and weâre still looking for not only golfers to play in the tournament, but also businesses who want to help young athletes in need by supporting this and other upcoming events.â
Blalock, Nager, and their fellow original RADDSports management team members Anthony Homer and Arika DeLazzer all serve on the new RADDSports Charityâs Board of Directors. Other members of the Board include former NFL defensive back Brandon Ghee, who is the director of operations for Yo Murphy Performance, the sports training company that operates at the Sports Campus, Realtor and former NFL fullback Chris Pressley (who played a few games with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers), and former Florida State University tight end Carver Donaldson.
âWeâre excited to kick off our fund-raising for RADDSports Charity at Lexington Oaks,â Nager says. âWe thank owner Anass El-Omari, who gave us a price for golfers that ensures we will be able to raise money for our charity with this event.â
To play in the first RADDSports Charity Golf Tournament, or to help sponsor it, visit RADDSportsCharity.org, email development director Lauren Cione at Lauren@RADDSports.com or call (727) 271-4873. Sponsorships start at as little as $250 and your companyâs logo/graphics will be displayed at the event.
Although I always try to support our local business community, Iâve never really been a big fan of the holiday shopping season. And, I generally shake my head when I see and hear of so many people who are willing to wait on line outside a store for hours on Thanksgiving Day or Black Friday in order to save a few dollars on a big-ticket item.
Gary Nager
Editorial
But, if youâre the type of person who doesnât think your time is worth more than that, Iâve always said âmore power to you.â
What I will say is that this year, Iâm genuinely hoping that all of our local mom-and-pop businesses â including our advertisers, of course â will be able to rebound from last yearâs Covid-induced coma.
And, since this is our pre-Christmas issue for New Tampa, I promise to do my part to help as many small businesses as possible this holiday season. I also would like to help as many charitable organizations as possible, because I know that Covid also was brutal to nonprofits, especially those whose mission is to help people in need.
So, feel free to email me at ads@ntneighborhoodnews.com or post on our âNeighborhood Newsâ page on Facebook with information about your locally owned small business or a nonprofit organization that you support anytime between now and December 23 and Iâll share that information with our online audience. Considering that we have more than 12,000 followers of our Neighborhood News page on Facebook, I hope itâll help.
About Supply Chain Issues &Â Employee ShortagesÂ
I also will admit that I donât really understand why Covid also has caused the worldwide supply chain problem, but I do know that itâs real and that the issue doesnât bode well for the holiday shopping season.
What I do have a better first-hand understanding about are the ongoing employee shortages that also are making things more difficult for local businesses. In addition to having difficulty finding one part-time office and sales assistant, despite months of looking, I also have had a number of restaurant owners tell me that they couldnât afford for me to do a Dining Feature story about their place because theyâre short-staffed and couldnât handle the expected huge influx all at once of new patrons when the story would break. This is literally a problem I had never heard of before in my nearly 28 years in this business.
And, as someone who dines out as often as possible for both business and pleasure, this obvious shortage of employees â despite more employers paying (or offering to pay) their people more money â has greatly affected me personally.
It seems that every local restaurant is hiring and many across the country are facing, according to a recent New York Times article, âa potentially catastrophic inability to hire,â because of Covid fears, too-generous government benefits (that make it too easy for people to not work) and other factors.
Even though Floridaâs minimum wage has been raised to $10 per hour (and will rise by $1 per hour per year, to $15 per hour, by 2026), itâs apparently not enough, especially since the increase for tipped workers is currently only from a minimum of $6.98 per hour plus tips now and will increase to $11.98 per hour plus tips in 2026.
The bottom line appears to be that despite my best hopes, wishes and prayers, despite the minimum wage increases and still-declining Covid hospitalizations, the 2021 holiday shopping season still may not be everything yours truly and so many other small business owners are hoping it will be.
And then, thereâs the new Omicron variant that I hope wonât put yet another monkey wrench into the works for restaurant and retail business owners. So, if youâre not already vaccinated, please do so ASAP.
A Turkey Trot By Any Other Name
If you were confused on Thanksgiving morning by the fact that there were two 5K âTurkey Trotâ events in Wesley Chapel, you werenât alone. Rich Wills, the former owner of the FitNiche (now Fit2Run) store in the Shops at Wiregrass, had started the annual âWiregrass Wobble Turkey Trot 5Kâ eight years ago, but was told that since he no longer owned the store, the mall was still going to host a âWiregrass Turkey Trot 5K,â with the New Tampa Rotary (again) as a partner, without him.
Undeterred, Wills moved the âofficialâ Wiregrass Wobble 5K and 1(tur)K runs to the Tampa Premium Outlets and the events at both malls attracted more than 1,000 runners and walkers and raised money for worthy causes. We were happy to help Wills promote his 8th annual run, the first ever held at the Outlets, and people raved about the new course, the camaraderie and the weather. Congrats, Rich!
